


Crow

by humblepirate (orphan_account)



Category: Hook (1991), Once Upon a Time (TV), Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 01:11:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6401824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/humblepirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic was hugely inspired by the series Howl at Hallowed Ground (see link). Seriously, it's amazing and I'm really upset that it was orphaned. The author's interpretation of Wendy's character is so unique, I can't get enough of it!</p>
<p>My own fic is aligned with the OUaT canon, but has very little to do with what has actually been shown on screen. I've always wished that season 3 showed us more of Neverland as Peter Pan is my favorite fairy tale, so this fic is mainly me being self-indulgent and exploring my own interpretation of the world. I also incorporate some elements of the original JM Barrie story and Hook (1991).</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Lost Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Drag My Teeth Across Your Chest](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045605) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account). 



> This fic was hugely inspired by the series Howl at Hallowed Ground (see link). Seriously, it's amazing and I'm really upset that it was orphaned. The author's interpretation of Wendy's character is so unique, I can't get enough of it!
> 
> My own fic is aligned with the OUaT canon, but has very little to do with what has actually been shown on screen. I've always wished that season 3 showed us more of Neverland as Peter Pan is my favorite fairy tale, so this fic is mainly me being self-indulgent and exploring my own interpretation of the world. I also incorporate some elements of the original JM Barrie story and Hook (1991).

Thick amber sap oozes between Wendy’s fingers as she sidles up a knotted tree trunk. Twenty men with arms outstretched could hardly encircle the trunk's full berth, and the bark is gnarled and twisted as the Lost Girl’s heart (perhaps that is why she spends so much of her time among the crown of the forest). As she climbs, she must occasionally pause to wrench herself free of a groaning limb or sinuous vine. Peter Pan and his Lost Boys may be in tune with every grain of sand on the island, but Wendy has been here nearly as long and is just as Lost as any of them, and so they jungle’s power does not affect her nearly as much as it once did.

How the strange magic used to vex her! The first few years after her arrival in Neverland were plagued with such vile pranks. She would be gathering berries in the woods, or trying to fashion sticks and vines that she might employ in darning socks, and suddenly the very soil beneath her feet would start to shake and the trees writhe as if wracked by the wildest storm even though the wind was still. Then the vines would unravel in her fingers and twine about her wrists so that she could not move as the tree branches whirled about her, whispering over her skin in a way that was somehow more terrible than if they had drawn blood.

When the invisible storm would cease, the Lost Boys would be there perching on boulders and tree branches and laughing, laughing at the prim, foolish little girl who still fell asleep every night thinking her brothers would come rescue her and they would all fly back home through the open window into Mummy and Daddy’s waiting arms.

She has lost count of the years—not that anything as trivial as time even mattered in Neverland—before she began to unsheathe her claws. When the familiar roil of the earth began to send ripples through the clearing in which she sat, something within her had turned hollow and hard. She’d clutched the sharpened twig in her hand and with a lightning motion driven it into the trunk of the nearest tree. Rather than splintering, to the astonishment of all present, the piece of wood had plunged into the trunk and stuck there.

Wendy had frozen in surprise, but when the Lost Boys emerged from their hiding spots with awe etched into their grimy faces, the hard place inside her had filled with hot anger like lava rushing into a crater that has broken through the crust. She’d leapt to her feet and greeted the boys with a defiant jut of her chin. She’d opened her mouth to give voice to the boiling words bubbling up within her ( _ you have taken my family you have taken my home you have taken my freedom I will not let you take my dignity as well _ ) but the words hissed and evaporated at the back of her throat. Instead, she had gripped the worn and holey stocking that she had been trying to mend and heaved it to the forest floor. Then she fixed the Lost Boys with the coldest glare she could summon as she lifted her foot and ground the tattered garment into the earth.

Awed silence had filled the clearing. Then someone, and soon more, began to beat their staffs into the ground, until the forest was filled with their rhythmic stomping and animalistic cries. That had been the first chip in Wendy’s gentle shell.

That was the first day she had begun to realize that she was a Lost Girl.

She knew the forest would never obey her like it did the Lost Boys, and especially not Peter. Yet since then, its flicking thorns and writhing vines had become minor nuisances.

Her bare feet scrabble for purchase on the ancient bark riddled with scars. Recent rain had given everything in the jungle a slick sheen and the moisture in the air is stifling. Perspiration clings to her like a second skin and wells in the crevices of her body.

When she’s high up enough that she can almost see light filtering through the leaf cover, she pauses. Neverland is not subject to such logical things as night and day, only the glow of the cursed star sentinels atoning for crimes that every living thing has long forgotten. Besides that, the thick trees keep the jungle in a state of perpetual shadow even at the sun’s peak. As she swings a leg up to straddle a branch in a very unladylike manner, she is bathed in the dappled yellowish light of the distant stellar guardians, and for a few moments she can imagine that it is the Sun of her old world, of London.

A rustling beneath her sends needles of adrenaline through her veins. She flattens her body against the branch and tilts her head to pick up the sounds of the forest. The slight wind dancing through the leaves melds with her gentle breathing. She can feel the life thrumming through the island’s core in sync with her own pulse.

Something else too—the barest flicker of sound.

By the time the arrow zips through the branches and buries itself in the massive trunk, Wendy is already perching on the branch below. With their presence revealed, the Lost Boys take no precautions in letting their arrows fly, but they are still milliseconds behind their target. She sprints through the jungle’s peaks as if the branches were stretches of flat plain rather than planks of wood wide as the span of an embrace at their junction of the trunk and as precarious as a leaf in a hurricane. Arrows whiz a fingernail’s breadth from her neck and stick into the trees, creating new gouges from which trail sap thicker than blood and the same shade of scarlet.

She is having such fun winning the game that she doesn’t realize where her haphazard trail is leading her. The trees begin to thin out some, their trunks gradually narrower and more scarred. A pungent whiff of campfire smoke and unwashed humans assaults her nose. The shadows of the jungle reach for her with spindly fingers that cut off the starlight. The world narrows and Wendy’s fevered pace sputters. They have taunted her back to the place of her nightmares—the heart of Pan’s wicked kingdom.

Her empty cage still dangles from Hangman’s Tree. A reminder that in this place she will never be free, she will never be anything unless Pan wills it.

Pain spikes along her arm. She glances down and sees the bare shaft of one of the Lost Boys’ arrows jutting out of her flesh. Her lips curl in a snarl and she whips around to face her attacker out of instinct, but she knows that the forest will bend to protect its charges before she can even glimpse them. Holding her injured arm against her side, she half-climbs, half-drops to the forest floor and ducks into a dense thicket of palms. The onslaught has ceased but the Lost Boys’ mocking laughter stings worse than any arrowhead.

Panic wells within her at the reality of being within such terrifying proximity to the place where she had felt more like a prisoner than any other time in the century or so of her existence, but she knows she won’t make it far with a scarlet trail leading the boys directly to her. So she tears a length of fabric from the hem of her dress and wraps it in a tight cross around the place where the shaft enters her arm. She knows better than to rip an arrow out of a wound. Securing the shaft so that it moves around as little as possible will keep it from worsening.

_ grit your teeth bare your fangs don’t let them see you cry _

Once her arm is tightly bound, Wendy steadies herself for the long journey back to her little house. She had built it herself after Peter had last freed her from her cage. It is hardly a grand structure, but Wendy prides herself on finding a way to survive outside of the prison of Pan’s control. It is the small things that give her joy—teaching herself to tie different kinds of knots with the hemp-like vines, fashioning a waterproof ceiling from strips of bark, figuring out the most comfortable way to sleep on a woven grass mat on the jungle floor. Wendy Darling is now barely an echo of the wide-eyed, wonder-stricken adolescent who once dreamt of marvelous adventures and cried when she found she could no longer remember the sound of her mother’s laugh.

One of the first things Wendy had taught herself was how to move silently through the forest. Practice and time have made her slip unnoticed with nearly as much ease as the island’s cleverest predators, other than Pan himself. She holds her arm close to her side but not right against it to avoid jostling the wound with the movement of her torso. She’s lived through much worse than this, but that doesn’t mean she is made of stone. Sunspots of pain spark through her arm, trying to claw their way through her back and shoulder. Her uninjured hand hovers within grabbing distance of the dagger strapped round her waist.

The softest whisper of footsteps on the forest floor brings her to a halt in an area where the trees have thinned some. She bares her teeth in a snarl as her eyes begin to rove the woods.

“I’m not in the mood for playing anymore,” she says.

Scuffed boots emerge from an invisible seam in the wooded clearing. Strikingly pale eyes taunt her from behind a wisp of blond tangles. The angry scar running from forehead to cheekbone stands out stark and intimidating in the shadows marring his angular face. Felix stops just inside the clearing and leans back to look at Wendy with an expression akin to a hawk examining a trapped vole. The smile that stretches across his craggy face is devoid of mirth.

“Didn’t you hear me, stupid boy?” Wendy snaps. “I don’t feel like playing one of your awful games.”

Her hand inches to the scabbard on her waist, but her fingers close on empty space. Felix, seeing this, smiles wider and reaches into his cloak. He withdraws Wendy’s dagger, a mediocre weapon she’d carved herself from the bone of some long-dead animal but hardly any worse than the handcrafted spears and clubs preferred by the Lost Boys.

“That’s mine,” she snarls.

Ignoring her, he begins to play with the dagger, tossing it up with a flick and then easily catching it by the handle. “You’re an awful long way from home,” he muses aloud.

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, and I’d very much like to get back to it. So if you don’t mind—” She stalks across the clearing and snatches for the blade, but Felix easily lifts it out of her reach. He eyes her with maddening smugness and it takes every bit of her will not to claw that smile off his filthy face.

“You make this too easy, Wendy-bird,” he chuckles.

“Is that so? Give my dagger back so I can carve you another scar to match,” she snarls.

“That’s not very nice of you, bird.” He tut-tuts. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar?”

“So you admit you’re an annoying, hairy insect?” she retorts.

“Ooh, feeling feisty today, are we?” His grin widens.

“Now, now, Felix, don’t torture the girl.”

A rustling in the shrubbery gives them both pause and they turn just as Peter Pan enters the clearing. Unlike his lackey, Peter is lithe and sleek, moving as if he casts no shadow at all. Yet there is something about him, a poison lurking just beneath his ivory skin and shock of orange hair like the markings on a monarch butterfly that serve as a warning to predators. While Felix’s hulking stature is enough to intimidate the strongest foe, Peter’s danger lurks in charming smiles and pretty words that lure children from their beds and trap them in their nightmares.

“She’s one of us, remember?” He strides to Felix’s side and takes the dagger from him, holding it at arm’s length like a curator assessing the value of some interesting artifact. Wendy knows better than to try to grab it from _him_ , but that doesn’t mean it isn’t maddening to watch him taunt her with the weapon she had fashioned specifically to protect herself from his playground.

“Who taught you how to make this?” he says at last.

“No one. I taught myself,” she replies.

He raises an eyebrow and gives her a patronizing smile that sends rage trembling through her bones. Dangling the weapon lazily in one hand, he steps closer. “It’s alright to admit when you need a little help, mouse,” he drawls. He is looking at her so intently that she is sure he can hear her breath catch when he lowers the dagger and leans forward. For the briefest of moments she thinks he is going to kiss her, then pinpricks of disappointment needle her heart as he gives her a look that is more sneer than smile. She is immediately flooded with shame, followed closely by anger as her reaches up and flicks the arrow shaft still protruding from her arm. A fresh wave of crimson stains her makeshift tourniquet, and she swears she sees a _hunger_ flick across his face. She hisses and jerks away.

“You’re despicable,” she snaps.

He gives a low chuckle. “Oh, did I hurt the poor little mouse?” he croons. “Does she need her Mummy to kiss her boo-boo and make the pain go away?”

Against all her better wisdom, Wendy bares her teeth in a ferocious snarl that causes Felix’s hand to jump to his scabbard. Peter, however, is unperturbed, even amused. Oh, how Wendy longs to wrap her fingers around his scrawny throat. She hates that he has so much power over her, that after so many decades of being trapped together he knows exactly how to bring her anger boiling to the surface yet she can hardly coax a ripple in his enigmatic disposition. She wants to summon words that cut him to the core and fill his wounds with the same fear and loneliness that he has forced down her throat for nearly a century. She wants to hurt the great Peter Pan, make him beg for relief, but all she can muster is a throaty “Fuck you.”

Peter seizes the hand on her injured arm and yanks her to his chest. She swallows the pain and does not drop her eyes from his. The bone dagger is caught between their palms, the serrated blade digging into her skin. The back of her hand presses against his chest and his against hers; she can feel his sooty heart thudding deep in its hollow cage. His breath ghosts across her cheek and his lips just brush against her skin as he leans close to her ear.

“I haven’t even gotten started, Darling,” he breathes.

Oh, he is charming- but she will not let him dampen her spirit. She jerks back, ripping the dagger from his grip as she does so, and spits directly into his face.

Felix lunges forward with murder in his eyes but Pan holds out a hand to stop him. He wipes the globule of saliva from his cheek, all the while never breaking Wendy’s stare. His eerily blank expression sends chills through her core, but she returns his look with stoic defiance. To her astonishment and fury, his lips break into an amused grin. “Our bird’s got some fire,” he chuckles. 

He wipes the back of his hand on Felix’s cloak and gives Wendy a knowing nod. Then the two of them meld into the forest as if they were merely part of the shadows.

  
  


“You’re lucky those arrows weren’t laced with dreamshade,” Tink says as she gingerly removes the bloodied bandages. Her nose wrinkles in disgust as she tosses the grimy fabric into the stream beside which the two friends are sitting.

“They’d never  _ really _ try to kill me,” Wendy replies with a contemptuous sigh. “Torment me, yes, certainly. But Pan would have their hides if they did anything to really hurt me.”

Tink raises an eyebrow. “And why do you think that is?” she asks.

“Because he wants to own me. He wants me in his debt so I never have a reason to leave.” She snorts. “Not that I could unless he let me.”

“Are you sure that’s true?” her friend prods.

“What else could it be? The boy drags me to Neverland, keeps me in a cage, sends his pack of mangy rats to torment me at all hours. Every time I find a little bit of peace, he has to crush it beneath his boot heel.”

She snatches a smooth gray stone from the stream’s edge and angrily flings it into the water, but it merely skips once and then sinks with a heavy  _ plop _ . 

“Honestly,” she continues, growing more heated the longer she dwells on it, “he is just such a- a child! One moment I want nothing more than to squeeze the breath from his godforsaken lungs, and then he gives me a  _ look _ and I want to- OW!”

Pain rockets through her arm and a thick spurt of blood stains the pebbles at her feet. Tink has seized the shaft of the arrow and shoved it the remaining distance through her arm. The blood-soaked arrowhead peers out from a cave of raw flesh. With a bit of wiggling, Tink manages to free it from Wendy’s arm, then easily withdraws the smooth shaft. Immediately she slaps a poultice of leaves on the twin wounds and secures it with a bit of vine.

“All done,” she says with a self-satisfied smile.

Wendy rolls her eyes, but she cannot help smiling back. “Thank you,” she says.

“You’re welcome. Now, back to Pan.” Her friend plops onto a mossy rock at the edge of the water and rests her chin in her hands, giving Wendy an expectant look. “I want to hear all the juicy bits.”

Wendy groans in disgust, giving the fairy a shove. Tinkerbell catches herself, laughing, and retaliates by splashing the girl with water from the stream.

“You’ll not get off that easy,” she teases.

Wendy shakes the water droplets from her hair. “There’s nothing to tell,” she says.

“Did he kiss you?”

“What? No!”

“Did you want him to?”

“Of course not. Why would you even say that?”

“Well, you’re not a little girl anymore.”

Much as she hates it, Wendy knows her friend is right. She may still be trapped in the body of an adolescent, but she is nothing like the frightened child who cried the first time she saw one of the Lost Boys kill a rabbit for supper. She is hardened, quick to bite and more comfortable drawing a cutlass than offering an embrace. She and the other Lost ones may look no different than the day Pan captured them, but no one could look at them and say that they were children anymore.

“That’s adult talk,” Wendy says.

“Oh, please. As if you haven’t thought about it.” Tink gives her friend a playful nudge.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

The fairy draws back, stung. “I thought we were friends,” she says softly.

Wendy feels a prick of guilt at the hurt tone in her voice. “We are,” she says. “I just…”

“You’re not in the mood.”

The girl sighs. “Thank you for…” She gestures to her bandaged arm. “I’ll see you for tea tomorrow morning?” she adds, rising to her feet. Tink nods once and does not say anything as she turns and marches into the brush.

Anger and guilt create a heavy cocktail in Wendy’s gut. Tinkerbell is her only friend on the island; they have never fought before. This is what happens when you let somebody into your heart, she reminds herself. Give a person the power to hurt you and they will never fail to do so.

_ stupid girl your heart is gone there is nothing left for you to give _

Just out of sight of the path back to her house can be heard the sounds of the stream dancing among the mossy boulders. She used to love spending time by the water- the streams and waterfalls dotting the island were so clear and inviting. But she has learned much since then. She has grown wary of things that can hide in the lagoons as easily as shadows, things with venomous claws that can snatch an unsuspecting ankle and drag a person below without making a ripple. The stream, like everything else in Neverland, is filled with poison and secrets.

Yet she can feel it calling to her now. The bluish crystalline water whispers to her, soft, pretty entreaties of peace. It fills her ears with memories of lying on the sunbaked boulders and trailing her fingers in the water, watching leaves swirl in the little eddies stirred up by contrary currents, dipping her feet in the shallows and leaping just out of reach of the mermaids’ peevish grasp. Those days had been filled with as much fear as excitement, but by Jove, at least she had known how to have  _ fun _ . The years in Pan’s prison have stripped her of that piece of herself.

Even so, she finds herself veering away from the direction of her house and following the stream. It beckons to her with sweet murmurs and sunlit memories. The ground beneath her bare feet changes from soil and leaf matter to pebbled mud as she emerges from the thicket of the jungle. Though the part of her mind that has grown paranoid and wary of all Pan’s tricks is wailing at her to go back, she treks along the shore with increasing vigor. The path becomes steeper and despite the taut muscles honed during a century of living in a wooded death trap, Wendy is soon breathing heavily. Feet toughened by years of running for fun and for her life across jungle floors ache with exhaustion. 

She pauses at a fork in the stream. The fervour that led her to stray so far into a mostly unfamiliar part of the island has begun to cede and anxiety is now creeping into her heart. Heat sears her cheeks. Stupid little girl, she chides herself, you know better than to chase after foolish whims in a place like Neverland. 

She plops down on the shore and begins to massage her aching feet. A flash of red sends a jolt through her, but it is just fresh blood leaking from the poultice and staining the smooth gray pebbles. She splashes some water on her arm to wash away the blood and resolves to treat it more closely when she returns to her house.

A puff of warmth tickles her cheek. Her hand is not halfway to the dagger at her waist before a blade is pressing against her throat. Her body goes still as a soft chuckle wisps across her ear.

“Lost a bit of your edge since the last time we saw you, eh?”

Wendy bites back a relieved sigh as she yanks the blade from her neck. “I knew it was you all along,” she says.

Rufio laughs again as he flops down next to her on the pebbled shore. He dips his bare feet into the stream and tilts his face to meet the sun. The red plumes in his hair spark like fire in the sunlight.

“So,” he says, “what is a young lady of London society doing all the way up here in the North Peaks?”

Wendy snorts. “That joke stopped being funny decades ago. Anyway, who says I’m not allowed to visit the North Peaks?”

“No one. It’s just that you’ve hardly ever come up here since… you know.” He senses her irritation and quickly amends his comment. “I’m glad to see a face that doesn’t look at me with a fiery desire to rip my throat out.”

“You always know how to charm a girl.”

He gives her good arm a playful slug. “You’re cute, but you’ve got too many cooties.”

Wendy sticks her tongue out at him, but his returning smile is small and wan. She scoots closer and reaches out a hand- to comfort?- and her friend flinches. Her heart plummets. “Has it really gotten that bad over there?” she asks.

His eyes fixate on the ground. “I’ve been a lost boy for a long time. Pan isn’t dealing out anything I can’t handle.” He smirks and raises his gaze to hers. “You know, if I didn’t know you so well, I’d almost mistake that for compassion.”

She rolls her eyes. “Like I said. Always the charmer.”

A comfortable silence falls between them, filling with the gentle murmur of the stream and the various sounds of the jungle. Wendy leans back with her elbows propped against the stony bank and closes her eyes. The breeze cools her damp skin. Pain stabs through her calm as fresh aching stirs up in her injured arm.

Rufio notices her expression and gives an exasperated groan. “You know the whole ‘imagination’ part of Neverland does not actually make you invincible, right?”

“That almost sounds like compassion,” she teases.

“I’m serious. You’re tough, Wendy, but you’re not perfect.”

“It was just an arrow.”

“Yeah, and I ‘just’ held a sword to your neck,” he snorts.

“I would have been fine,” she snaps, sitting up. She gives him a half-annoyed shove and he rolls onto his side, groaning.

“I’m hit! I’m hit!” he moans. “I’ve been slain by the great, invincible Wendy! Help! Oh, woe is me.”

Wendy can’t help allowing a giggle to escape. She gives Rufio’s arm a pat and climbs to her feet, brushing the dirt off her dress. “Pleasant as I find you company,” she says,” I really must get back home now.”

“No, Wendy! Can you truly be so cruel as to leave me in this state?” Rufio howls. He catches the hem of her dress, sending her stumbling back with a shriek. She catches her balance and whirls around to fix her friend with a venomous glare.

“Screw you,” she says, and kicks at the streambank, spraying muck into the boy’s face.

“Oh, is that so?” he jeers. He grabs a handful of mud and hurls it at her, but she dodges it with ease. He snatches at her dress again and his fingers just skim the frayed hem as Wendy dances backwards. Rufio scrambles to his feet to chase after her and she runs down the bank, shrieking with laughter. They stumble into the shallows of the stream and begin to splash water and mud at one another.

A particularly foul glob smacks Wendy across the cheek and she gasps. “Oh, you will pay for that,” she says. She plunges her fist beneath the surface and withdraws a handful of dripping slime which she heaves in her friend’s direction. Rufio ducks to avoid it and loses his balance, toppling into the water. The glob of mud soars past him and into the trees beyond.

Wendy could have convinced herself that the noise that ensues was a neverbird nesting in the foliage or some other such creature scrumming for food, but her instincts snap into hypervigilance. There is no scrap of doubt within her that the cry erupting from the trees had been of a distinctly human nature.

Rufio notices her abrupt solemnity and pauses in his efforts to right himself. “What is it?” he whispers. His hand is already at his scabbard.

Wendy steps onto the shore, eyes fixed upon the spot from which the noise had issued. She plucks an apple-sized rock off the shore, tests its weight in her hand, then hurls it into the jungle.

A bony hand snaps out of the trees and intercepts the missile. Felix steps into the light and drops the rock onto the ground. A glob of putrid brown muck is splattered across his face.

Rufio scrambles out of the water and stands with spine erect. “Felix,” He says, “funny to see you around these parts. I was just-”

“Camp. Now,” Felix commands. Rufio bows his head and scurries into the jungle, shooting an apologetic look at Wendy over his shoulder. It is just the Lost Girl and the Pan’s right-hand man now.

She grits her teeth. “Were you  _ spying _ on us?” she snarls.

Felix steps toward her, eyes simmering. The sight is almost frightening to Wendy. Felix is cold and watchful as a stone sentinel over a palace gate, as unpredictable and ever-present as the thin sheen of ice that you don’t realize how deadly it is until it swallows you. He rarely shows any emotion at all, much less outright anger. The red cracks in his facade are a dangerous thing and Wendy has to fight with all her being not to turn and run.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he hisses.

Wendy rolls her eyes. “We both know you can’t stop me,” she sneers. “Luckily for you, I was just about to leave.”

She starts to draw away but his hand shoots out and grasps her arm around the muddied poultice. Wendy cries out as pain flares up along with fresh welling of blood. Fury overtakes her and she wrenches herself from his grip with a snarl. Blood makes wet tracks through the grime on her skin and drips onto the stony shore.

“Listen, you awful boy-”

Felix covers her mouth with his hand and she falls silent, both from surprise and indignation. His other hand is stained with her blood. He lifts the hand to his face, eyes fixed upon it with something akin to reverence, then his gaze flicks to hers. He slides one finger into his mouth and sucks on the bloodied digit, his expression unreadable. Revulsion curdles in Wendy’s gut but she cannot tear herself away.

The boy pulls the finger from his mouth with an unsavory  _ pop _ . He smiles at her look of horror.

Rage breaks through the disgust. Her teeth clamp down on the hand over her mouth and he draws it back with a hiss. She spits at his feet.

“You’re vile,” she snarls. With that, she turns and sprints away into the forest, trying her hardest to pretend she does not feel his eyes burning after her.


	2. Unfair Play

Wendy is proud of her little house. It’s nothing like the spacious dwelling she enjoyed (however briefly) upon her arrival in Neverland, but this is something she built herself with her own calloused hands, not summoned through strange magic or pixie dust. It consists of several large tree branches driven deep into the forest floor and interwoven with supple canes patched over with mud to create a solid outer wall. The roof is made of several layers of thick leaf fronds secured to a pole in the center of the hut so that they form a peaked shape that deflects the rain.

The hut is deep in the southern part of the jungle in a thick grove of evergreens whose fat boughs conceal her little camp. She has long since mastered the art of walking through the trees without emerging coated in sap and cuts from stinging needles, and she never takes the same route twice. It is a bit useless, as Pan’s spies are always about; the very forest whispers its secrets to him. Yet, her little acts of rebellion give her a sense of control.

The afternoon- what she assumes to be so, at least- has melted into somber evening by the time she returns home. She ducks through a slat in the wall frame. Inside the structure is a woven leaf pallet that serves as her bed, a small pile of dry lumber, and a woven sack containing the few material possessions she owns. She takes one of the sprite lamps hanging from a split bough and shakes it to wake the sprites up. (Sprites are, of course, one of the dullest of the Neverland’s magical species and Tink has vehemently impressed upon her many times the distinctions between they and the noble race of fairies, so Wendy feels no guilt in her actions.) They flicker sleepily for a moment before filling the room with their soft yellow glow.

She places the lamp on the wood pile and plops onto the dirt floor. Her arms is caked with smears of dried blood. She spits on the back of her hand and rubs it on her skin to get the blood off. When it is mostly clean (or what passes for clean in this place), she peels off the poultice and casts it aside. Deep scarlet smudges the skin but the wound itself appears to be clotting nicely. She grabs the knapsack and is digging for a garment that is mostly dirt-free when her eyes alight on something in the center of the dirt floor: a rather large pair of boot prints.

She replaces the sack and leans close to the ground to examine the prints. She hasn’t bothered with shoes in ages, and in any case these are far bigger than her own feet. Then she notices the other clue that she was meant to find- a lone orange hair.

“PETER!”

She storms out of the hut into the gloom of the forest. “Come out here and face me, you vile, sniveling little-”

A chuckle makes her whirl around, but there is no way to know from where the sound is coming. It bounces off the trees in every direction, taunting her. It bothers her how easily he can get under her skin, but she is too furious to care.

“Peter,” she snarls, “I am not in the mood.”

Only silence greets her.

She clenches her fists and stomps her foot. “Peter!” she howls.

“If I’d known you’d be screaming my name so much, I’d have raided your camp much sooner, Darling.”

She takes a shaky breath and tugs a veneer of patience over temper ( _hide your fire behind a grin don’t let him know what he can do to you_ ). “What were you doing in my house?” she asks the shadows.

“Is that what you call it?” His jeering smile dances in her peripheral vision. “Looks rather dilapidated. But maybe you’re so used to your cage that squalor feels like a palace to you.”

“And who put me in that cage, I wonder?” she grits out.  
  
His laughter reverberates around the clearing. It drowns out the other sounds of the forest yet is also one with the squawking insects and groaning nevertrees. The wind starts up with a howl and tears the needles from the evergreen branches, their tips scrape against her skin just too softly to draw blood. Her skirt whips about her legs with increasing fervor as she feels the ground begin to shift beneath her. The old fear of the Pan’s power quakes somewhere deep beneath the crust of a century of self-preservation, but then steely anger restores her control.  
  
She whirls around and flings her hands out to give him a good shove. When the wind stops, however, he has both her wrists in his grip and is holding her against his chest. Very well it is so, for she realizes that they are now several metres above the ground. She hates it when she has to rely on him in this manner, but for the moment her will to survive overcomes her pride.  
  
“That wasn’t very nice.” He smirks down at her. They are nearly the same height, but in their current state he is a full head taller than her. She bares her teeth in a snarl.  
  
“Put me down and you’ll see how awful I can be,” she spits.  
  
He grins. “As you wish.” His grip on her wrists loosens and she plunges toward the ground.  
  
Before the thought of screaming can reach her brain (followed closely by a string of curses against Peter’s every fiber), he swoops down to intercept her fall. Shame sears her cheeks. He knows she would rather break all of her bones a thousand times over than be beholden to him, and he is absolutely loving it.  
  
Wendy wriggles free of his arms and drops the short remaining distance, landing easily on her feet. Peter continues to hover several feet off the ground, giving her a devilish smirk that makes her fingers itch for his throat.  
  
“My house. Why. Did you. Break. In?” she seethes.  
  
“Oh, come on, Wendy-bird. You know I just can’t tell you. That wouldn’t be a very fun game, would it?” he taunts.  
  
“Fine,” she says. “What do I have to do to get you to tell me?”  
  
“A kiss.”  
  
She knew what he would say but the words are still startling to her. The way he says it is so matter-of-fact, as if they were discussing the weather rather than engaging in their usual game of dark desire. It’s been the same story every since he freed her from her cage: he taunts her with the weaknesses to which only he is privy, she know what he wants yet she falls for his pretty words and somehow manages to be surprised by his advances.  
  
There is no confusion for her about Peter’s true intentions. The boy king’s only love is for power. He may want to trick her into thinking he cares for her, he may even believe it himself in an artificial way, but Wendy Moira Angela Darling knows that he cannot love her in the way her parents had loved each other. He loves her in the manner in which one admires a caged songbird- he wants to clip her wings and keep her for himself, to sing for him alone. She is a trophy to be won, an obstacle to be surmounted, but he will never have her if she can help it.  
  
Wendy folds her arms across her chest and gives him her most disinterested eye roll. “If that’s the price, I suppose it isn’t really worth it, then,” she sighs. She gives a haughty toss of her shoulders and starts back toward her hut, but Peter is already there, blocking her way.  
  
“You sure about that, mouse?” he says with a mischievous arch of his eyebrow. He reaches into his shirt (Wendy is trying so hard not to notice how inviting the lithe muscles in his chest just beneath the opening of his collar appear in the starlight) and withdraws a tiny vial filled with gray powder. She recognizes it in an instant.  
  
“How dare you!” she snaps, lunging for him, but he is gone before she can take a step. She stumbles but he appears behind her, grabs hold of her injured arm and tugs her toward him.  
  
He tut-tuts at the sight of the bloodied gash. “Shame. I thought I taught you better about handling arrow wounds.”  
  
She drives her elbow back into his chest and he reels back, letting his grip on her arm loosen enough for her to wrench free. She spins around to face him but he has already recovered himself and is hovering just out of her reach.  
  
“Give it back, you flitting coward,” she cries.  
  
He examines the vial with a taunting expression. “Someone’s been naughty,” he teases. “You know pixie dust isn’t allowed on the island in anyone’s hands but mine.”  
  
“It doesn’t work. It’s dead,” she says.  
  
“So you won’t mind if I keep it?” He grins.  
  
“Peter Pan, you give that back to me right now or I’ll- I’ll-”  
  
“What? Send me to my room without supper?”  
  
She groans and throws her hands up. “Honestly, Peter, sometimes you are so infuriating. You’re like a- like a child!”  
  
“Yes, Darling, that’s kind of the point,” he scoffs.  
  
She heaves a long-suffering sigh, more for his benefit than hers, and stomps back toward her hut. She will no longer give him the satisfaction of her anger.  
  
He appears at her side and leans close to her ear as she retreats. “You know, mouse, there is one easy way to get what you want,” he murmurs.  
  
Wendy stops. He’s right, she knows that. One kiss really is not such a bad thing, if it means getting her pixie dust back. She could close her eyes for two seconds and then it would be over and he would leave and she could go back to her hut and be alone.  
  
Another anxiety, one that she will never ever voice even to herself, is that this would be her first kiss. Decades of existence, and though she is not new to the concept, she has never given in to the opportunity. It would be fitting, she thinks, that the boy who despises such grown-up concepts of romantic sentiment would be the one to escort her over the threshold of this milestone in her life. Not that any of those trivial romantic rites much matter in a place such as Neverland.  
  
She speaks without looking at Peter. “One kiss,” she says.  
  
She can hear the triumph in his voice. “That’s all,” he says, “and then you will be rid of me.”  
  
Wendy draws a steadying breath, then turns to face the Lost Boy. He crooks an eyebrow and grins in a manner that would normally be infuriating, but now seems more irritating by virtue of how completely alluring it is to her. She closes her eyes so she can’t see him, but he is burned into the darkness behind her eyelids, his breathing echoes in her head, so close-  
  
A mocking snort makes her eyes shoot open. Peter hides his smile behind his hand, but is clearly laughing at her in the cruelest way.  
  
“What is it?” she snaps, stung.  
  
“Nothing,” he says between giggles. “You just look so… _terrified_.”  
  
Rage flares up and colors the forest red. She wrenches his hand from his face and presses her lips to his. His body stiffens in surprise, then relaxes with the gentle clash of tongue and lips. The panic about her novice kissing ability melts away. She reaches up to tangle her fingers in his hair and he responds by grasping her waist. His arms create a cage that presses her close to his chest, something that any other time would elicit fury, but now sparks of excitement and pleasure spring at the apex of her thighs.  
  
He kisses her much the way he does everything else, projecting an air of skill and ease, wholly focused on the present with no regard for consequences. She can feel the way his fingers dig into her waist, the need for control evident in the way he holds her close to his body, but she’ll be damned before she lets him get the upper hand. She presses herself against him, paying special attention to the bulge in his trousers, and she can feel a shudder ripple through his body. She smiles against his lips.  
  
Cold air rushes over her skin. Wendy opens her eyes. She is alone in the shadowed evergreen grove, skin still burning where he had touched it.  
  
The vial of pixie dust rests on the dirt at her feet. She grabs it and hurries back into the hut. The sprites have gone back to sleep and the little room is dark but for a few slivers of starlight leaking through the gaps in the branches. She lies down on her pallet and examines the vial clutched in her hand. After a few moments, she tucks it in the rucksack and closes her eyes. She goes to sleep smiling.


	3. A Crack In the Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The more Wendy learns, the less she understands about the island.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally we get to some actual (sort of) banging! Kissing is really hard to write. The exchange at the end is kind of OOC, but I decided to keep it the way it is because it's kind of my way of expressing my issues with the Darling Pan ship while still touching on why I like it, if that makes sense? Basically, Peter's controlling of Wendy is really fucked up, but there is also an element of companionship present- like they're both broken people who have learned to deal with their hardships in different ways, and with each other they don't have to constantly put up walls (hence this chapter title) or act tough. That's just how I see it, at least.

Wendy used to fancy herself an explorer. Sunrise to sunset she would wander through the Neverland with pencil and paper in hand, documenting the types of plants and wildlife she saw and sketching rough maps using her footsteps to measure distance (Hangman’s Tree is exactly thirty-three Wendyfeet in circumference, etc.). She noted weather patterns, star alignments, soil composition, bird migration.

It was roughly three years by her count when she stopped envisioning herself as an explorer and more the target of a practical joke, one embedded in the very roots of the island.

Neverland cannot be categorized on a sheet of paper. It is an alive thing, untamed by trivial matters such as physics. After all, how can you document a place where something can be willed into existence by pure imagination? Wendy came to realize that nothing in Neverland was concrete or logical. And it was all tied to one boy.

The island has no seasons, only unending heat and humidity, with the occasional hurricane during one of Peter’s tantrums. It does not even have night or day, just slight variations in the brightness of the lonely gray stars. If Peter is in a good mood, one believes the sun is shining; but if he is in a foul one, the shadows engulf even the brightest flame. The trees and shrubs grow where he wills them, flowers or thorns blossom in his footsteps. The nevercreatures scatter at his approach and the rivers thrash in his wake.

There are few places on the island where Wendy can escape. Sometimes she visits Baelfire’s cave and traces the tally marks on the rough stone wall, the ghosts of nights spent curled up in fear, sorrow for a father who could never love anything more than his own power etched into the earth. More than once she has fallen asleep on the worn pallet where he once lay. Those nights leave her sore and reeling like the mornings after she and Tink stay up late indulging in fermented coconut milk. Her head hurts- not from crying, she cannot remember the last time she cried- from the ache of not being able to cry, her tongue is dry, her fingertips nub. She moves with groggy step and a fouler mood than usual.

It’s dangerous, she knows, to allow herself to dwell on the people she has lost. She feels them like sweet poison beneath her skin. Sometimes she catches a view of her reflection in a murky puddle and sees her mother’s eyes peering back out at her from atop her father’s beaked nose and thin lips. She hears Michael’s footsteps in the pattering rain and John’s laughter in the breezes off the rocking sea. She sees Bae in the shadows that reach with oily fingers through the nightmares that remind her again and again of the awful night when he was taken.

The best way to keep from being hurt is to not think at all. She turns instead to survival. She taught herself how to whittle bone to a fine enough point to tear flesh, to fashion a makeshift tourniquet from every kind of material on the island, to run through the treetops as if gravity did not apply to her. She has learned how to survive out here on her own, to make the very earth move according to her will.

She sees herself in the blood that she pours into Neverland’s soil.

This morning she wakes with it caked into her reed pallet. The arrow wounds have scabbed over but the skin is stained with red. She rubs the sleep from her eyes and rolls onto her side. Inches from her face lies the vial of pixie dust.

Memories of the previous night jolt to the front of her mind. A mix of shame and horror curdles in her gut, accompanied by a flutter of excitement.

She groans and stuffs the pixie dust into her knapsack.

 

The ladder to Tink’s treehouse is waiting when she arrives. Wendy allows herself a sigh of relief. She had been afraid that the fairy wouldn’t allow her to visit today. The treehouse is the only place on the island where she gets any reprieve from the Lost Boys and their pranks, both because of her friend’s company, and a certain peculiar aspect of the dwelling- it is a blind spot in Peter’s magic. Technically, Tinkerbell is a grown-up, but at the same time a being of eternal youth and freedom. This would constantly vex the boy king if Tink did not match him bite for blow. Her ferocity garners his respect, so he allows her to remain on the island and does not interfere with Wendy’s visits.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t employ every means to listen in on them.

When Wendy pops her head into the treehouse, her friend is just setting a pot of water on the stove. She gives Wendy a solemn nod. Wendy stands against the wall and wrings her dress; the tension in the air is unbearable. The girl is unused to confronting her emotions and longs for their awkward disposition to end.

“Glad to see your arm’s healing,” Tink says at last. Her words fall like boulders on the silence, phatic, not quite breaking it. She shrugs.

“I’ve survived worse.” Quickly, she adds, “Thank you.”

Tink seats herself on the floor beneath the room’s single grimy window and pats the spot next to her. The wall of tension between them disintegrates and Wendy crumples with relief.

“Something’s wrong,” Tink says as the girl lowers herself to the floor.

“It’s Peter,” Wendy replies.

The fairy rolls her eyes with disdain at the mention of the boy’s name. “When isn’t it?” she replies. “Go on.”

As Wendy recounts their brief tryst in the camp, Tink’s expression grows more incredulous. When the story is over, she gives her friend a nudge that nearly bowls her over.

“Little Wendy,” she teases, “all grown-”

“If you finish that sentence I will slit your throat,” Wendy snaps, but she can’t resist an uncharacteristically bashful smile. She ignores how good it feels to be chatting with her friend about such pointless, _girlish_ things, the camaraderie that she missed out on when her adolescence was stolen from her by the very subject of their gossip.

“Who knew Wendy had a romantic side?” Tink giggles.

Wendy groans. “It was one kiss, and you know it wasn’t as if he _liked_ me. It’s all just a game to him.”

“Sure it is. Doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun.”

The kettle starts to shriek and Tink jumps up to grab it. She pours two mugs of tea and brings them back to their sunny spot beneath the window. Wendy holds the mug to her face and lets the steam warm her skin. She breathes in the sweet herbal scent and pictures it washing through her, making her clean.

Tink’s eyes narrow. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

Wendy sighs. There is no point in lying to her friend. “Yesterday, I caught Felix following me in the woods. Twice.”

“Gross. What did he want?”

“I wish I knew. He…” Her face flushes hot as the memory of the Lost Boy surfaces, the bloody finger sliding between his lips to the knuckle, his eyes smoldering into hers.

Tinkerbell frowns. “He’s dangerous,” she says. “I know that’s nothing new to you, love, but he’s different. He’s-”

“I know.”

The women bow beneath the silent knowledge that they, however powerful, are still just pawns at the mercy of the inhabitants of the cursed island. Mischief and danger seeps from Neverland’s every seam, and it is not a place that is kind to disgraced fairies or lost girls no matter how strong their pride or deep their bite.

They have lived on the island for a long time and are used to its tricks, but Peter and Felix remain twin enigmas. The crownless ruler of Neverland is a flitting trickster, present in every shadow, icy disdain painted in cutting grins. Peter’s most loyal lieutenant projects danger in his unpredictable moods and the simmering bloodlust beneath his stony disposition. Felix is an extension of Peter’s presence, executing the boy’s orders and delivering fear into the hearts of stray Lost Boys.

“What did he do when you saw him?” Tinkerbell asks.

“His usual tricks,” Wendy snorts. “Yesterday morning he stole my dagger, then later Rufio and I were in the North Peaks when-”

“You were in the North Peaks?”

Tink’s face blanches. She sets her tea down and puts a hand on the girl’s arm. “What in the world were you doin’ up there? You know how dangerous- I mean-”

Wendy shrugs the fairy’s hand off and sets her half-empty mug on the treehouse floor. “Why does everyone suddenly care so much that I was in the North Peaks?” she snaps. “Rufio, Felix, now you? I can handle my damn self, you know.”

Tinkerbell shrinks back.

Wendy stands up. “Thank you for the tea,” she says.

The burn of angry tears sears the back of her eyelids as she sprints through the forest. It feels like an ache, pressure pushing at the dam she has so carefully constructed to bind up her sadness so that it does not consume her, and she feels that Tink has chiseled a fissure in the stone. She will not yield, however; she is stronger than that. She is a queen, a wolf, a Lost Girl, and she is stronger than this.

Instead of heading back home, she reverts her course to the west. Woodsmoke stings her eyes as she approaches the Lost Boys’ camp. The scent of spoiled meat and rotten leaves assails her nose, carried on the breeze that emanates from the island’s centre. The forest surrounding the camp is more spindly than the rest, bare branches twisting out of scarred grey trunks. Arrows dripping with blood and sap jut out of the trees like broken limbs.

Bones crunch beneath Wendy’s feet, spitting fur and gristle into the soil. The branches crackle as they reach for her, but they merely brush against the hem of her dress before withering back before her rage.

A pair of sentinels perch in the branches close to the camp’s entrance. She meets their eyes as she passes but they do not acknowledge her.

When she enters the camp, a few of the boys glance up but quickly look away when she trains her coldly regal glare on them. A bonfire in the centre of the clearing sizzles as fat drips off a hunk of roasting meat onto the smoldering embers. One Lost Boy attends the roasting spit while several others carve out the carcass of a dead boar. Others lounge throughout the camp, sharpening their spears or exchanging foul jokes.

Wendy skirts the camp’s edge in a direct path to the tent beneath Hangman’s Tree. As she passes a cluster of boys crouching round a game, one of them rises and blocks her way.

“He’s not here,” he says with a smirk.

Wendy cocks an eyebrow. “Who asked you?”

The boy looms closer to her and sneers. “Pan has more important things to worry about than a stupid _girl_.”

In the next instant he is staggering back with four lines brimming red across his cheek. Wendy has blood and flesh beneath her grimy fingernails and a snarl on her lips. The other Lost Boys snatch their weapons and converge on her.

A lone clap sounds just beyond the edge of the group. The boys part and Peter strides to the middle of the fray, sarcastically applauding as he does so.

“Well done,” he says to Wendy with an indiscernible grin. “Our bird’s not lost her fire.”

She scowls. “I want a private audience,” she demands.

The boy chuckles. “What, didn’t get enough of me last night?”

His followers hoot and jeer. Heat sears Wendy’s cheeks but she will not, cannot, let them cow her.

“Enough, Peter,” she snaps.

He whistles and crosses his arms over his chest (she refuses to notice the way the wiry muscles in his arms bulge slightly). “And what if I say no?” His lips twist into a mocking sneer.

All her restraint releases in a huff. She snatches him by the arm and yanks him across the camp, away from the _ooh_ s and whistles coming from their audience. He allows her to lead him into the grove of evergreens at the edge of camp before drawing out of her grasp. She opens her mouth to speak but he puts a finger to his lips.

“Let’s go somewhere a bit more private,” he says.

The sunlight distorts and then they are standing in a familiar room. Wendy grits her teeth. It is so like Peter to bring her back to the place that had held such fond and yet terrifying memories.

The house he once built for her looks as if it hasn’t been touched since the day she left. Her canopy bed with the neatly tucked white linens looms like a forlorn spectre against one wall. The only other furniture is a sagging dresser strewn with the little shells and bits of glass that she used to collect, and a little bookshelf, the contents of which droop under the years of dust and neglect.

Peter flops onto the foot of the bed, sending a puff of dust from the comforter. Wendy fixes her gaze on the dust motes swirling in the beam of wan sunlight struggling through the single, grimy window and ignores the invitation present in his rakish expression. He quirks the corner of his mouth in a smirk that makes her heart quicken.

“Have you been sending Felix to spy on me?” she snaps.

Her own boldness startles her, but she is equally surprised by the cloud that comes across Peter’s face. He rises from the bed and his smile disappears. “Is he following you? Did he touch you?” he barks.

“What do you care?” she replies, folding her arms across her chest as he takes a step closer to her.

He pauses, shrugs, then the alarm melts away and the ease returns to his posture. He steps toward her again with mischief lurking in his smile. “What’s wrong with wanting to protect what’s mine?” he murmurs.

“Hah!” she snorts. “Your possessiveness is not nearly as charming as you think, Peter.”

He cocks an eyebrow (it should not be as alluring to her as it is) and the corners of his mouth twitch as if he is privy to an incredibly funny joke that Wendy is not. “I see now,” he says. “You’re angry at me because of last night.”

Shame sears her cheeks. She tries to cover it with a cough but it is too late. “I knew it!” Peter cries with a barking laugh. “Oh, you talk pretty, Wendy-bird, but you know you wanted me. You _liked_ kissing me-”

His head snaps to the side with the force of her fist against his jaw. He stumbles back until his knees meet the foot of the bed and send him sprawling.

When he sits up, his mouth is welling with blood and his eyes glow with heat. Wendy stands frozen, fist still clenched midair, breathing rapid, shallow breaths. Her teeth are locked in a ferocious snarl.

Peter places a hand against his cheek where an angry red welt is starting to blossom, his expression fathomless. For the first time since she’d entered the camp, something like true fear spreads like ice through Wendy’s heart. She lowers her fist. Teasing, mischief- that she can handle. This Peter, silent, smoldering like the angry clouds right before a hurricane, sends chills of premonition through her body.

He takes his hand from his cheek and examines the blood smeared on his fingers. Eyes as violently green as the island itself and simmering with venom hold Wendy paralyzed.

He reaches for her with the bloody hand, wraps his slender fingers around her wrist, and pulls her to him with a jerk. He swallows her yelp with soft lips that cut with the taste of iron and yearn to make her own mouth red and sore to match. She is leaning against the foot of the bed, head tilted down to meet Peter’s as he perches on the mattress, but he lets go of her wrist to scoop her onto his lap. She settles with knees straddling his torso and fingers knotted in his hair.

His hands move to grip her thighs, thumbs digging into her skin and drawing a hiss from her lips. She anchors herself by draping her arms over his shoulders and grinding against his hips. She may be the picture of virginity, but a hundred or so years have hardly left Wendy a saint. She knows what buttons to push to get the right reactions, and what she doesn’t know she resolves to learn through experience.

Coiling a lock of hair around her finger and yanking his head back makes him cry out and surrender to her lips on his throat. Trailing kisses along his skin and suckling on the joint of shoulder and neck causes him to dig his fingers into the base of her spine and buck his hips against hers. Putting any kind of pressure on his lap draws a desperate whine from some carnal place deep within him. He tries to cover it with a growl, but she is thrillingly aware of how easily she can control his pleasure.

Yet, he is nearly as good as she. He peppers kisses along her jaw, her forehead, her nose, and when he finally gets to her mouth he kisses her with his whole self, pressing his lips to hers with a bruising force that leaves her pleasurably sore. He bites her clavicle and breathes her name against her skin like it is his deliverance. Whenever her fingers mold him into a gasping mess and she begins to think that she is gaining strides in their little game, he shoots back with a thrust of his pelvis that sends sparks rocketing through her core or delivers a kiss to her mouth just gentle enough to throw off her focus.

The feeling is like losing control, like sticking her toes over the edge of a cliff or careening through the treetops. This is so much more intense than their flirtatious teasing, more delicious and sweeping than even their kiss the night before. It is so-

She hesitates before thinking, _grown-up_.

The thought jolts her back to herself. Revulsion curdles in her stomach and the pleasure seeps away. Wrong, wrong, this is all wrong-

Wendy tears herself from the boy’s embrace and rolls off the bed. She stands in the center of the room and hugs herself, feeling that she may crack and fall apart under Peter’s angry gaze. He watches her from the foot of the bed with lips silky red, hair sticking up in a wild tangle, teeth marks on his neck and jaw already blossoming into bruises. His eyes simmer with fury, and a touch of something else- hurt?

Wendy subtly tugs the collar of her dress up over the bruises dotting her chest. She ignores the dampness and need welling between her thighs at the sight of the Lost Boy ( _her_ lost boy) lying on her bed, so vulnerable and hot and wanting- wanting her.

“This can’t happen, Peter,” she says.

He scowls at her. “Why not?”

Something cracks within her. “You kept me in a _cage_ ,” she snaps. “You lured me to Neverland, away from my family, my _home_ . You made me carry out your orders just to keep my brothers alive and then you killed them anyway. Now I’m trapped on this goddamn island and I can’t even take a piss without _your permission_.”

“Name one time when I ever prevented you from using the facilities here,” he sniffs.

She groans. “That’s not the _point_. I am a prisoner in a land you created, a land where you are totally in control and I have none. That is not the basis for a healthy relationship.”

“Whoa, whoa- relationship?” he snorts. “You’re pretty, mouse, but I’m not-”

“That’s not what I meant,” she sighs. “You don’t love me. You don’t care about me. You want to own me, like one of those pretty ornaments- put me on a shelf and keep me there to play with when _you_ feel like it.”

“Now what’s so wrong about that?” he says.

She throws her hands up and bites back a shriek of frustration. “You can’t treat people that way! I am a person with thoughts and feelings, and those feelings deserve respect.”

Peter gets up from the bed and advances toward her. “You have feelings- about me,” he murmurs.

She does not move from where she stands. He takes her hand and intertwines his fingers with hers, never breaking their gaze. They are so close she can see the veins pulsing with red where she had punched him. His bloodied lips are plump and way more inviting than they should be right now. His eyes bore into hers, alight with the same hunger that she is trying so desperately to set aside.

Peter brings their hands to his mouth and kisses each of her fingers with calm reverence. Then he lets her go and steps away, his smoldering expression returned once more to the impenetrable mask of the trickster.

“Go, then,” he says, gesturing toward the door.

Wendy lets out a breath that she had not realized she was holding and starts for the door.

“Oh, and Wendy?”

She stops with her hand on the doorknob and turns to him. A piece of her hopes that he’ll try to change her mind, pull her to him and with thrusting fingers and feverish lips convince her of the carnal truth that she is trying so pointlessly to bury in the crevices of her broken heart.

But of course he doesn’t.

“I’ll talk to Felix,” he says. “Let me know if he bothers you again.”

She nods her thanks because she knows that if she unlocks her jaw she will not be able to stop the tears. She steps back out into the steamy jungle, alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my version of the story, Peter killed John and Michael and didn't tell Wendy so that she would continue to do what he told her in order to keep them alive. When she found out the truth, she rebelled and escaped the camp to live on her own.


End file.
